Craft beer is having a moment.
Quinn Dombrowski/flickr
When I was first getting into craft beer in the late 1990s and early 2000s, beer lists were nothing more than big-dick contests. Back then it wasn’t so much the quality that mattered — it was pure quantity, with bars bragging about their 30 or 50 or 100 taps of craft beer. Certain places would revel in handing you a pleather-bound menu of a phonebook-thickness when you asked for a mere bottle list. This was also the era of the TOTAL TAP TAKEOVER (always in all-caps), when bars would proudly advertise that they were selling 30 Stone beers, or 45 Brooklyn Brewery offerings, on this one single night.

And that was super cool — back then, at least.

Nowadays? Massive, unwieldy beer lists are seen as a little hokey, something for a soulless chain like World of Beer or Buffalo Wild Wings. Sure, there remain plenty of excellent beer bars that have massive lists, like Denver's Falling Rock Taphouse, one of the original craft beer bars (opened in 1997) and still terrific, 75 taps in all. Or there's Des Moines' El Bait Shop, which boasts a jaw-dropping 185 lines. But for the most part, the new wave of craft-beer bars opening today are focused on just a few draughts of tightly curated, hyper-fresh offerings.

This streamlining makes sense. Back in, say, 2002, when there were so few bars in the world that exclusively sold craft beer, the only way to differentiate one's business was by quantity of tap lines and amount of bottles in the cooler. Now that even dive bars have craft beer available, the way a quality beer bar pulls ahead is by offering the truly spectacular — even if that's just five well-picked pints for you. With the vastness of the beer world today, bars need a new hook, whether it’s exclusively focusing on a region (like Brooklyn’s newly opened Cardiff Giant, which pours only New York state-brewed beer), a style (like The Sovereign with its exotic Belgian-ish tilt), or something altogether unique.

These aren't necessarily the best beer bars in America — plenty of those massive menu-boasting old dogs still have a claim to that crown — but these following 15 bars do have the most thoughtful beer lists going at the moment.

Every time I step foot in the East Village's Proletariat, I know I'm not just going to encounter many beers I've never had — I'm going to come across quite a few I've never even heard of. The hallway of a space can only accommodate a couple dozen drinkers, old-school rap music blasts loudly, and, most importantly, the beer list is way too esoteric for an Average Joe to wanna hang. You come to Proletariat to challenge your palate and have the informed bartenders make you realize there's so much about beer you still don't know.

Gold Star Beer Counter — Brooklyn, NY

Brooklyn has plenty of well-curated beers lists at places like the aforementioned Cardiff Giant, Spuyten Duyvil, and Tørst, but Gold Star might be the best of them all. Set on a Prospect Heights street so quiet you can’t believe it's even zoned for a bar, owner Joshua Van Horn needed a roster of intriguing beers for luring non-local clientele. Many of those offerings are going to be of the limited, barrel-aged, and often sour variety — which, believe me, are inherently not cheap (luckily, Van Horn is quite generous with samples). Having just celebrated their one year anniversary, there’s even a walk-up growler fill window, perfect for the area's dog and stroller set.

The relaxed back bar mainly pours legitimate Belgian beer, while the front bar often focuses on American interpretations of the styles courtesy of places like The Lost Abbey, Allagash, and Russian River. In fact, Monk’s is one of the only east coast locations that gets kegs from that acclaimed California brewery. They also boast a "well-curated" selection of moules frites (try the "Ghent").

Literally a taproom — there's no bottle list whatsoever — Tria boasts bevchek-powered iPad menus that allow you to get a live look at what's on tap, its origin and ABV, a brief description of style, and, most importantly, how much of it is left in the keg (better order that Prairie Bomb before it blows!). The well-curated taps extend even beyond beer to twelve draught wines, two ciders, and two artisanal sodas.

While Churchkey is DC beer impresario Greg Engert's best bar, his newest venture shows another side of his potential. I was lucky enough to be in DC during the bar's opening weekend, back in February, when Engert had assembled perhaps the best beer list in American history. There was Cantillon Fou Foune, Drie Fonteinen Hommage, Westvleteren 12, and plenty of other "how did he get this?!" taps and bottles available. Now you would think having 50 drafts would break the rules inherent to this piece, but it doesn't — not when each selection continues to be so thoughtful and so distinctive, owing to Engert's insane Rolodex of relations in the industry both stateside and abroad.

Stroll Main Street in the sleepy town of Waterbury, Vermont — about 30 miles outside of Burlington — and you'll feel like you’re walking the key stretch of some sort of Beery Disneyland. There's great beer bars like Prohibition Pig and The Reservoir, but Blackback has the best curated list of them all. To a certain extent, it's hard to f--- up a beer list in Vermont, especially when many of the best breweries in the country are your neighbors. But Blackback doesn't just rest off its prized location. There's usually a half-dozen Hill Farmstead offerings on tap, a few more small batch numbers from Lawson's Finest, and even stuff from more off-the-radar purveyors like Foley Brothers. And do they have Heady? Of course they have Heady.

Meaning "to start a revolution" in Latin, Novare Res favors any brewery that could do such a thing, no matter their location. Set off an alley, in a dark, slightly underground cellar-like setting, locals belly up to their winding bar for a new perspective on what beer can be. Looking to avoid stuff that is "too available" in the city's other great beer bars, Novare Res' menu isn't just overrun with New England IPAs, but also includes offbeat stuff from places like Belgium, Germany, and Montreal.

Another large tap list, yes, but one strictly focused on the sublime. Edmund's Oast is not a place to pound pints after a softball game — though I suppose you could, it's not pretentious by any means — but rather is an upscale joint with the beer to match. The half-a-hundred taps are pricey pours that can take the place of, say, wine in pairing perfectly with the in-house charcuterie program. Their bottle list has some tantalizing vintage offerings you haven't seen in years and, justly, will set you back quite a bit.

It takes a lot to impress a bar-goer in the land of bourbon; luckily, Holy Grale offers a godly experience with their well-curated beer menu. The cathedral-like bar is focused mainly on the world's greatest beers, and not just from your expected places like Belgium and Germany. You'll frequently find intriguing offerings from France, Scandinavia, and Asia too, often in the realm of the boozy and barrel-aged. For jingoists, a small selection of quality middle American beers also make appearances.

With a skull-and-crossbones logo offering a German motto of "Scheiß bier kann tödlich sein" ("S--- beer will kill you"), you can quickly tell that Local Option is a little different from the pleasant, airy, reclaimed wood gastropubs that dominate today's beer bar scene. Bearded and bespectacled owner Tony Russomanno and "Director ov Consumption" Alexi D. Front look more like a death metal band than curators of some of the most aggressive beers of the midwest and beyond (they're also really nice guys, shhh). They contract brew their own equally metal beer as well.

Star Bar — Denver, CO

Denver is such a behemoth of a beer city — with over 200 breweries, and most bars counting many dozens of taps — that it can be hard to settle on something to actually drink. Sometimes it would be nice for the bar to make the initial choices for you, and perhaps have things whittled down to only a few solid options. Such is Star Bar, a welcoming dive near Coors Field where there's "no crap on tap," but also a well-curated list you could completely drink through in just two visits (or one very long night).

Bottle shop/beer bar hybrids have become some of the best places to drink beer of late, and that trend might be thanks to City Beer. Open since 2006, it's one of the crown jewels of the Bay Area beer scene, and thus all the top breweries in town take pride in being on tap there. Grab a sour ale or an IPA you've never heard of, and wander the store snagging bottles you won't believe they actually have in stock.

While rubes wait in line to get into the Ballast Point Tasting Room to taste stuff they've surely already had before, shrewder San Diegans casually stroll into this boutique bottle shop cum beer bar just across the street. Whether at this original location in Little Italy, or the newest Bottlecraft locations in North Park and the Liberty Station area, Cali beer geeks can discover the current state-of-the-art brews for their great beer state.

Bailey's Taproom — Portland, OR

It would be irresponsible not to include a famed PDX taproom on our list, and Bailey's is surely the best at presenting the most expansive, esoteric, and limited from the Beaver State. A digitized "big board" lists the day's ever-changing offerings, and most out-of-towners will be lucky to have heard of a good chunk of them. That's because their list is dominated by small-batch brewers whose wares never leave the state.

N.W.I.P.A. — Portland, OR

The smallest (er, "best curated") beer list on our list is this Mt. Scott spot with a mere half-dozen taps, predominantly of that eponymous style. Not to worry if you're a hop hater, as a tap or two is usually left over for a sour or a cider but always of the unique and limited variety. There's a trio of bottle coolers too, and most tap beers are just a fiver to boot.